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Galitsia
Galitsia (Yiddish: גאַליציע‎, Galitsiye ''ɡəˈlɪt.si.ə, officially the '''Republic of Galitsia' (Yiddish: רעפּובליק פון גאַליציע, Republik Fun Galitsiye, fʊn ɡəˈlɪt.si.ə, is a unitary sovereign state in Eastern Europe. It is divided into three administrative subdivisions known as Shtatn, covering an area of 74,123.19 square kilometers (28,618.96 sq miles) with a mostly temperate climate. With a population of around 14.3 million people, Galitsia is the eleventh most populous country in Europe. Galitsia's capital and largest city is Lublin. Other major cities include Byalistok, Grodne, Brisk, Lemberg, Rayshe and Nay Yerusholayem. While relatively young when compared to other European nations, Galitsia's history as a predominantly Jewish nation is intertwined with the history of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. Many Galitsian scholars claim that the origin of Galitsia as a politically recognized entity dates back to the 16th century with the Council of Four Lands. The Council of Four Lands acted as a central body of Jewish authority in Poland from the second half of the 16th century to 1764. The first known regulation for the Council is dated by 1580. Seventy delegates from local kehillot met to discuss taxation and other issues important to the Jewish community. The "four lands" were Greater Poland, Little Poland, Ruthenia and Volhynia. However, the Council of Four Lands was primarily confined to urban centers and as such functioned as somewhat of a "national archipelago" with Jewish towns dotting the Polish nation. Following the Second Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1793, Catherine the Great of Russia greatly expanded upon the Pale of Settlement. At its height, the Pale, including the new Polish and Lithuanian territories, had a Jewish population of over five million, and represented the largest component (40 percent) of the world Jewish population at that time. Jews were forbidden to live in agricultural communities, or certain cities, and were forced to move to small provincial towns, thus fostering the rise of the shtetls. ''However, Yiddish culture managed to flourish in the shtetls due to political and cultural isolation and led to the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah. The Haskalah latched onto other political movements of the time leading to the foundation of the early Zionist movement (which was notably anti-diaspora and pro-Hebrew) and which formed the early Aheym movement (which was pro-diaspora and pro-Yiddish). Overall many Galitsian scholars cite the Pale of Settlement as a prototype and ''national inspiration for Galitsia. Following the rise of antisemitism in the later 19th and early 20th century many Ashkenazi Jews turned towards the reactionary Zionist movement which would remain the primary Jewish political movement until the Versailles War in which it would be replaced by Marxist-Leninist theory and the Aheym movement. This wave of antisemitism set the stage for the Tseshterung (Yiddish: צעשטערונג‎ "destruction"), a period of extreme violence against Jews enacted by the Nazi German state and its allies from 1938 to 1942. After the swift German invasion of Poland in 1939 (leading to the establishment of the pro-Nazi puppet government of Huzarzy Poland) during the Versailles War, many Jews were deported from Germany, Czechoslovakia and Huzarzy Poland to the Lublin Reservation. Like the Pale of Settlement this had the unintended consequence of creating a territorial concentration of Jews in eastern Poland. Tuvia Bielski (who would in later years be elected the first Chairman of the Galitsyanish Council of Ministers) rallied many Jews who had been targeted by the Nazis and formed the Eydishe Bafreyung Farband (Yiddish: ייִדישע באַפרייונג פאַרבאַנד‎ "Jewish Liberation Union") with support from the Soviets as the first Jewish Paramilitary Defense Force. The Eydishe Bafreyung Farband was essential in planning, arming and initiating the 1940 Lublin Uprising in the Lublin Reservation. The Lublin Uprising allowed the Soviets to break the Huzarzy-Nazi Line and liberate Poland. Following the end of the Versailles War in 1940, many Jews who had survived the Tseshterung felt a stronger sense of belonging to their diaspora lands as well as a sense of unity and nationalism. As such the flow of Jewish settlers to Palestine slowed to a near stop as the Aheym Movement of diaspora nationalism mixed with communist ideologies took hold within the Jewish population. With a constant escalation of violence between ethnic Poles and Ukrainians, Chairman Mikhail Kalinin of the Soviet Union suggested the creation of a buffer state between Poland and the newly annexed Kresy. Lavrentiy Beria, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union with the go-ahead from Kalinin meets with the commander of the Eydishe Bafreyung Farband, Tuvia Bielski who had allied with the Soviet Army to discuss the idea of a creating a Yiddish speaking buffer state between Poland and the USSR to replace the desolate Jewish Autonomous Oblast. This agreement between Bielski, Kalinin and Beria would become known as the Lviv-Rzeszów Agreement (Yiddish: העסקעם ‎ריישע-לעמבערג Rayshe-Lemberg Heskem). This new buffer state would be defined as the land between the Lviv Line (24.03° East) and the Rzeszów Line (21.5° East) inside of the borders of the Second Polish Republic with its capital of Lublin. This specifically included the Bialystok, Lublin and Lviv Voivodeships of the Second Polish Republic. East of the Lviv Line would be annexed by the Soviet Union and west of Rzeszów Line is considered the Polish Democratic Republic. This new state would become known as the Galitsian Worker’s Republic (Yiddish: ארבעטערעפּובליק גאַליציאַניש Galitsyanish Arbeterepublik) known to the Western World as Soviet Galicia or Yiddish Galicia (to differentiate it from Spanish Galicia) as an allusion to the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic, despite the territory only encompassing a fraction of the traditional region of Galicia. Despite Galitsia being predominantly ethnically Jewish as per the terms of the agreement it was politically treated as ethnically neutral and all culture groups living there were granted cultural autonomy. The Jews were chosen as an ethnically neutral population between the Poles and Ukrainians however the Soviet government demanded secularization of the population and the development of a secular Yiddish culture and identity among the Jewish population, as such many vocal Rabbis were targeted by the Soviet government. Following the Jerusalem Wars of the 1950's, Galitsia was one of the first Eastern Bloc nations to rise up during the so-called Soviet Spring as many Eastern Bloc nations vied for independence from Soviet control. Establishing itself as a democratic state, it was renamed the Republic of Galitsia. Galitsia is a developed market and regional power. Nicknamed the "Switzerland of Eastern Europe" it has the one of the most dynamic economies in Eastern Europe, simultaneously achieving a very high rank on the Human Development Index. Additionally, the Galitsian Stock Exchange in Lublin is the largest and most important in Eastern Europe. Galitsia is a developed and democratic country, which maintains a high-income economy along with very high standards of living, life quality, safety, education and economic freedom. According to the World Bank, Galitsia has a leading school educational system in Europe. The country provides free university education, state-funded social security and a universal health care system for all citizens. Having an extensive history, Galitsia has developed a rich cultural heritage, including numerous historical monuments. --- In 1933, persecution of the Jews became an active Nazi policy, but at first laws were not as rigorously obeyed or as devastating as in later years. Such clauses, known as Aryan paragraphs, had been postulated previously by antisemitism and enacted in many private organizations. In 1935 and 1936, the pace of persecution of the Jews increased. In May 1935, Jews were forbidden to join the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces), and that year, anti-Jewish propaganda appeared in Nazi German shops and restaurants. The Nuremberg Racial Purity Laws were passed around the time of the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg; On September 15, 1935, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor was passed, preventing sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and Jews. At the same time the Reich Citizenship Law was passed and was reinforced in November by a decree, stating that all Jews, even quarter- and half-Jews, were no longer citizens (Reichsbürger) of their own country (their official status became Reichsangehöriger, "subject of the state"). This meant that they had no basic civil rights, such as that to vote. (But at this time the right to vote for the non-Jewish Germans only meant the obligation to vote for the Nazi party.) This removal of basic citizens' rights preceded harsher laws to be passed in the future against Jews. The drafting of the Nuremberg Laws is often attributed to Hans Globke. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from exerting any influence in education, politics, higher education and industry. Because of this, there was nothing to stop the anti-Jewish actions which spread across the Nazi-German economy. During this period, almost half of the Jewish population of Germany fled to the country with many fleeing to the Second Polish Republic. The increasingly totalitarian, militaristic regime which was being imposed on Germany by Hitler allowed him to control the actions of the SS and the military. On November 7, 1938, a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, attacked and shot two German officials in the Nazi German embassy in Paris. (Grynszpan was angry about the treatment of his parents by the Nazi Germans.) On November 9 the German Attache, Ernst vom Rath, died. Goebbels issued instructions that demonstrations against Jews were to be organized and undertaken in retaliation throughout Germany. The SS ordered the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) to be carried out that night, November 9–10, 1938. The storefronts of Jewish shops and offices were smashed and vandalized, and many synagogues were destroyed by fire. Approximately 91 Jews were killed, and another 30,000 arrested, mostly able bodied males, all of whom were sent to the newly formed concentration camps. In the following 3 months some 2000–2500 of them died in the concentration camps, the rest were released under the condition that they leave Germany. Many Germans were disgusted by this action when the full extent of the damage was discovered, so Hitler ordered that it be blamed on the Jews. Collectively, the Jews were made to pay back one billion Reichsmark in damages, the fine being raised by confiscating 20 per cent of every Jewish property. The Jews also had to repair all damages at their own cost.